Professor of medicine and physiology at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Brooks has put together some material used at his school to teach clinical physiology to medical students. In a sense, the book is mis-titled, as it tries to cover more than "gastrointestinal physiology" and includes material on etiology, symptoms and signs, and even on diagnostic and therapeutic considerations. In this the book may have overextended itself, even though there is always need for continuing refreshment of the clinician's knowledge of physiology and the aberrant trends that lead to disease. After all, a number of other books discuss clinical science and diagnosis.

One way to test the book is to see what it tells about several disorders of which the reviewer himself is in need of "brushing up" on. Looking at the section on exudative enteropathy, for example, I did not find the kind of synthesis that the student needs